Sony Xperia Z1 Compact vs Xperia Z3 Compact comparison review

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Sony Xperia Z1 Compact vs Xperia Z3 Compact comparison review

Sony launched several new devices during IFA 2014 in Berlin at the beginning of September. Among those new devices was the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, which replaces the Xperia Z1 Compact (Sony skipped over the Z2 Compact, it seems). Here, we put the two smartphones head-to-head to see how they stack up in our Sony Xperia Z1 Compact vs Sony Xperia Z3 Compact comparison review. See also: Best smartphones 2014

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact vs Sony Xperia Z3 Compact: Price

The Xperia Z3 Compact costs £429, from Sony, though you'll find it cheaper if you shop around. Clove is offering it for just £349, for example.

For now, you can still buy the Xperia Z1 Compact from Sony too, at a price of £349. We've yet to see it offered much cheaper by third-party resellers so the Z3 Compact is a better deal right now. Read next: Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact vs Sony Xperia Z3 Compact: Design and build

The Xperia Z3 Compact has a sleeker and more streamlined design than its predecessor. It's lighter, thinner, more durable and has new colours.

Taking a closer look, you'll first notice that the Z3 Compact comes in black, green, orange or white, while the Z1 Compact has white, pink, yellow or black options.

Sony has shaved a small amount off of the thickness and weight with the new model, too. The Z3 Compact measures 8.6mm thick and weighs 129g, compared with the 9.5mm and 137g of the Z1 Compact.

When it comes to durability, the Z3 Compact has new nylon corners to protect the smartphone should you accidentally drop it, and it's dust- and waterproof to a rating of IP68 compared with the IP55 rating of the Z1 Compact.

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact vs Sony Xperia Z3 Compact: Screen

The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact has a 4.6in screen, which is bigger than the 4.3in of the Z1 Compact but the overall size of the phone is similar thanks to the thinner bezels on the newer smartphone.

They share the same 720p resolution, though, which actually means that the pixel density of the older phone is slightly higher, at 341ppi compared with the Z3 Compact's 319ppi.

We've not been able to run our full benchmark tests on the newer Compact yet, but we were impressed with the results achieved by the Xperia Z1 Compact and expect the Z3 Compact to be even better.

You'll get 16GB of built-in storage with both the Z1 Compact and Z3 Compact, and both offer microSD card slots. The Z3 Compact supports microSD cards up to 128GB while the Z1 Compact offers up to 64GB, though.

Connectivity features in both smartphones are largely the same, including Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and 4G LTE, but the Z3 Compact does support the faster 11ac WiFi standard that the Z1 misses out on.

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact vs Sony Xperia Z3 Compact: Camera

You'll also find a similar camera in both of the Z Compact smartphones from Sony. Both have 20.7Mp main cameras with the Sony Exmor RS sensor, but the Z3 Compact does offer a 25mm wide-angle and a super-high ISO of 128000.

The front-facing camera on the Z3 Compact is 2.2Mp while the Z1 Compact has a 2Mp camera on the front. They're both capable of recording 1080p video.

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact vs Sony Xperia Z3 Compact: Software

Both the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact and its predecessor run Android 4.4 KitKat with Sony's own user interface.

The Z3 Compact has some cool new features that the Z1 Compact missed out on, though. It supports PS4 Remote Play for playing PS4 games over a WiFi network and has high-res audio playback including DSD files. If you don't own any high-res music then Sony's DSEE HD (digital sound enhancement engine) promised to upscale it to near high-res quality.

SHOULD I BUY SONY XPERIA Z3 COMPACT?

Overall, the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact is not all that different from the Xperia Z1 Compact. The design is improved, the screen is a bit bigger, the processor is slightly better and the camera has been tweaked, but we'd suggest that none of those improvements are major.
However, unless you can find the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact for under £300, we'd recommend buying the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact for £349 for those slight improvements, extra durability and new features.

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Comments

Phil - 12:19 01-03-2015

Sony XperiaZ1 Compact – one of the most annoying phones I’ve ever had. First of all thecamera performs very poorly - 20,7 mpx doesn’t mean that it takes goodpictures. They’re just big and that’s it. And it doesn’t really give you much.In the daylight they’re comparable to photos from other phones but when there’sa little less light, everything is always blurred. And I mean always. Onlyputting it on a tripod would help but still not enough for it to take sharppictures when there’s little light. Then there is the flash which is useless –again I mean it. You cannot use it as pictures are becoming blue. So forgetabout pictures after dark. This issue has been reported to Sony ever since thephone appeared on the market and thousands of people bought it and startedcomplaining. No reaction from the manufacturer, no adequate software update toaddress this issue. Check other comments on this phone and you’ll see thatevery Z1 Compact fails here. Video recording is ok though. The quality isdecent but it often cannot focus properly and struggles for several seconds.Also, the view is very narrow (doesn’t apply to photos – it’s much betterthere) which has just ruined my yesterday’s video when I tried to recordsomething from the top with a stretched arm – this has led me to finally writingthis review after a year of using the phone to warn the potential buyers aboutwhat lemon Sony has introduced to the market.

Anotherthing it the additional camera button (which not always works properly by theway) which if you hold opens automatically a camera app. Nice thing to have butit sets the camera only to 8 mpx mode/720p video. No way to switch so that youcan take a full res picture or a video. I’ve search for that with no success.If you want to use 20,7 mpx and full HD, you need to unlock the screen and choosethe camera app or after holding the button and starting the 8 mpx/720p mode youneed to go to camera settings and switch to 20,7/full HD. Putting it simply –there’s no way of quickly taking a full resolution photo/video. Great!

Generallythe phone doesn’t freeze at all. After having it for a full year, it has neverfrozen during all kind of actions. Never – and that’s a nice thing. Some appshappened to die several times but I think it’s no the phone’s fault but some issuewith the apps themselves. The phone runs on 4.4 Android KitKat software whichis the latest available so far.

And here Ihave to get back to the camera app which sometimes (5% of the time you run it)says that the camera is unavailable. Of course it usually happens when you wantto take a picture quickly. No, you have to restart the phone and hope for thecamera app to work this time.

Thissoftware has made the quick settings menu to split to two parts (tabs). If youopen it (drag from the top) it only shows you notifications which I always readwhen they appear. I don’t store them so I’m not interested in seeing that 150times a day. To get to the quick settings you need to click once more in thesecond tab. So you need to drag and click to get where you want. This has comewith the 4.4 KitKat. Great improvement again! And now imagine that you do thatevery single time for almost a whole year (update was released later). This isjust about the most annoying thing about this phone. If you want to openInternet connection, GPS, adjust brightness or anything other to work from thatmenu, you do not necessarily want to get through all kinds of different menus.

Speakingabout speed, the reaction times are not bad. They’re not really impressiveeither. Switching through home screen’s pages is slower than in iPhone 1. Yesit is. It’s not a huge disadvantage but surprises me that a phone that is 6-7 (iPhonefrom 2007 or 2008) years younger does some simple things not as good as the “grandpa”iPhone (it’s battery still holds enough to use it as an music player :)).

Then thereis the auto dimming screen that often doesn’t switch off. It just stays lit upall the time if you don’t turn it off manually using the side button. It willstay on until the battery dies, I checked. It’s like that since I bought thephone. Doesn’t always behave this way but it happened several times a week andthe only solution to that is to reset it or completely turn off the phone. Ithought it may be caused by some app running in the background and forcing thedisplay to stay on but after turning all of them off, the problem didn’tdisappear… So annoying. I’m now just waiting to swap it for a 2x as expensiveiPhone which I do not need but the useless camera and the annoying way of theway the Sony works is too much for me and leaves me no choice. I had a SamsungGalaxy S before and it wasn’t perfect either. It was ok but was freezing a lotand that was its biggest problem. Some problems with reading the SD card alsoappeared (unfortunately Samsungs like to do that).

On theother hand the battery life is superb. Wi-Fi and data transmission work veryfast. The screen quality is also good even though the factory brightnessadjustment may not be enough for some of us and you’ll need to download an appthat expands its range of adjustment.

The mainspeaker is rather quiet comparing to any Samsung which may not be a big dealbit it surprised me. The quality of sound (and music) is noticeably worsethough (comparing to the SGS3 and a very old Galaxy S1).

Thenotification LED is barely seen so it’s basically useless unless you look at itdirectly. You may miss some messages because of that and it really, reallybothers me in everyday life as I have to constantly look and check the phonebeing worried that I miss something important. Also, when you get a textmessage, the display doesn’t light up and all you get it that LED flashing fromtime to time. You also may not get any visual preview on the center of screenof what the message contains. Only after pushing the side button you may see anicon in the upper left corner and a part of a message at the time. Then thetext disappears and all you’re left with is that tiny icon. Very frustrating,especially if your screen background is rather bright and it’s hard to see thelittle text message icon. These are the everyday problems living with theXperia Z1 Compact.

If you usethe alarm clock, you need to know that when it rings there’s only one way toturn it off – you have to slide your finger on the screen from a certain pointto the side of the screen. It’s impossible to do that without looking at thephone because there’s no tolerance and you need to touch the screen in anexactly indicated spot. It usually takes several times to manage thatespecially if you’ve just opened your eyes. Better have something else for analarm clock...

One lastthing that is almost funny and ridiculous. When I grab the phone with one handand hold it, I put my little finger underneath it to prevent it from slippingand falling on the ground. Now the bottom end has very sharp edges around thespeaker and the microphone. You can feel them every single time. I just cannotcomment on that…

This phoneis just not well-thought and it makes using it very, very annoying. I really donot recommend this phone to anyone. I bought it because the camera was supposedto be so good. I’m never going to buy anything from Sony again, ever. It wasreleased in 2014 and they still cannot get simple things to work. I spent sometime to write all of that hoping that some of the ones that read it, avoidmaking a really bad decision.

Thomas - 13:33 09-12-2014

WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE I HAVE !!_EVER_!! experienced in my life.I bought a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact about six months ago. After about 4 months the phone stopped working. I was getting no charging. Long and behold Sony was charging me for a bad motherboard. I later put together that if you put too much pressure in the back corner of the phone, then it will break off the part that connects the battery to the motherboard. And no, you cannot buy the part.

After sending it to Sony (Kent, UK) location, I received a quote to pay £128.08 ( £90.85 for "electric repair", £24.17 "handling fee", and £13.06 for shipping). I tried asking what the electrical repair was and they said they had to escalate this to a "escalations manager" to provide the information. After five days I got a call saying the phone is not under warranty and that the phone needs to be fixed. I told them I wanted to know what the electrical repair was for as I didn't do anything to break it, so I want to challenge the charges. I also wanted to know why they were charging me nearly double the cost of shipping the unit back to me. I sent the item to them for £7.50 with £500 insurance, and they wanted £13.06 for shipping it back to me.

Long story short, I've called them 3-4 days a week asking for a manager to call me back and the employees who answer the phone just kept telling me that they would email the escalations engineers to call me back. In addition, they would not allow me to talk to the call center duty manager. It's been nearly two months and I have not received a call back from a escalations manager or received any new information otherwise. I keep being told that the escalation managers are not available and that I can either pay the fee or ask for them to return the phone back. Oh, also that it's not under warranty because I broke it.

The day I get this phone back I am selling it, and never buying a Sony product as long as i live. Learn from my mistake and save yourself the hassle.

FYI:Sony doesn't even fix their own phones, which is why they will take days if months to even get you information about your repair.